Cork Printmakers Studio Gallery
03 October – 22 November 2024
Opening: Thursday 3 October, 5:00pm
Artist Talk: Thursday 31 October 1-2pm
Antarctic Archive is a solo exhibition by Elize de Beer that explores her grandfather, Willie de Beer’s photographic archive of Antarctica. The exhibition features new work in print, sculpture, and ephemera, which reinterpret and reimagine the archival material through a uniquely personal lens. Antarctic Archive examines how these personal records reflect broader global concerns, highlighting the delicate balance between the human and non-human world.
From 1970 to 1980, Willie de Beer documented his daily life and the Antarctic landscape while constructing bases, research stations, and scientific equipment for the South African National Antarctic Programme (SANAP) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The studies and data collected at these sites are crucial to our understanding of Earth’s systems and the implications for global climate changes.
The imagery within the series of photopolymer prints were created by manually manipulating and layering photographic slides, overlaying the landscape, wildlife and human influences. The hexyflex sculpture, Invertible Landscapes, is a reinterpretation of a reoccurring form within the archive, further emphasising the harsh influence of the built infrastructure on the environment.
The exhibition forms part of Cork Printmakers’ 2024 Climate Action Exhibition Programme, which broadly explores themes of environment, biodiversity, climate change, and sustainability.
About:
Elize de Beer is a visual artist based in Cork, Ireland. In her expanded print practice, she questions broader concepts and concerns around written language, the objectivity of books, and archiving, visually exploring abstracted text and manipulated archival materials. To further interrogate the form, materiality, and function of the book, de Beer creates artist books and large-scale immersive pop-up book sculptures. Through these material and visual explorations, she challenges the hierarchies and systems within archives, publishing, and library spaces, particularly in how knowledge is shared and accessed.
Elize is a member of Sample-Studios and Cork Printmakers. Her work has been shown internationally and nationally, including recent 2024 solo shows The Books We Haven’t Read, LHQ Gallery, Cork County Library and Orthography In Disregard, QSS Gallery, Belfast She has artworks in both private and institutional collections, including the OPW, Ireland and the University of Cape Town. Alongside her artistic practice de Beer is an arts facilitator and has co-organised Cork Zine since 2022. She graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town, South Africa with a BAFA and an honours in Curatorial Studies. Her practice has been supported with awards from the Arts Council, Creative Ireland and Cork County Council.
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